The basis of the apparatus of the present invention is to provide a new vehicle or an attachment for a vehicle to convert it to a new vehicle, typically for occupation by a single occupant or player, although there may be two or more players in modified forms of the vehicle, and the vehicle is equipped in order to receive a playing ball or equivalent member such as a puck, to hold the ball, and to propel it from the vehicle. In some respects therefore the game can be compared to a game such as football or hockey except that the player's skills are transferred through a vehicle which in turn is equipped for receipt and propelling of the ball. The vehicle preferably is motorised, but it may be manually driven.
It is already known from U.S. Pat. No. 3,820,790 and German Patent Document DE-A-1578628 to provide a vehicle for the playing of a soccer like game, wherein the vehicle has a carrier member by which the ball is held and by which the ball can be propelled by reciprocation of the carrier member. Such a vehicle is however limited in that it requires the ball to be propelled from the carrier in the same direction in which it is received in the carrier, which limits its utility.
The U.S. Pat. No. 3,264,782 describes on the other hand a toy steam train into the tender of which balls are loaded, and from the funnel of which the balls can be propelled upwards, like puffs of steam, and a child playing with the toy can try to catch the balls. The device of U.S. Pat. No. 5,335,917 is somewhat similar in that a motorised bucket has an opening in its wall and balls are loaded into the top of the bucket, and are propelled out of the opening.
As in some of the prior arrangements indicated above, it is envisaged in the present invention that in one form of play of the game, there will be several motorised vehicles of the type to which the invention relates, controllable by respective players, and the vehicles will be arranged in teams, the respective teams playing on the playing field or pitch, provided with goals or goal areas or point scoring systems so that the objective of the game is to propel the ball into the goal or goal area, so that teams can score goals during periods of play, and, similar to soccer and hockey, and the winning team is the team which scores the more goals. Players will be required to exercise considerable skill in using the vehicles.
It is envisaged that in any one team there may be two types of vehicle, one for use by a player who will be designated to operate similar to a goal keeper, and a second type of which there may be several for use by the respective outfield players.